


Bloodletting

by Steel_Drums_and_Island_Dances



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU, Gen, Marauders, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Marauders Friendship (Harry Potter), POV Sirius Black, Sirius Black's Prank on Severus Snape, The Prank, Young Remus Lupin, Young Sirius Black
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-17
Updated: 2019-10-17
Packaged: 2020-12-14 02:08:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21007955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Steel_Drums_and_Island_Dances/pseuds/Steel_Drums_and_Island_Dances
Summary: A glimpse into an AU where circumstances are slightly shifted, and Remus has a different reaction to the Prank.--"If you want to hurt him? Hurt him. If you want to kill him--""Remus, please--""Then kill him." His eyes gleamed, burnished gold. "Finish it."





	Bloodletting

**Author's Note:**

> I've been fascinated for a while now with the idea of gray Marauders. Not fully dark, but a little more desperate, and a little more willing to do things that they didn't in canon, so just a little bit more human in their youth, I guess? I don't think that everyone would have been perfectly moral all the time. That's why Sirius (and Harry, especially in the 7th book) has always been such a compelling character to me. He always seemed the most human in that he was trying so hard to be good but didn't always succeed.
> 
> I feel like Remus has more of that in him than we see as well. The only time we really get a glimpse of that is in the 7th book when he tries to join Harry in the hunt for Horcruxes.
> 
> I also feel that like attracts like, and God knows I have been enabled/encouraged by my friends to go along with impulses I might not have by myself. I think with one or two adjusted factors, Remus could have been very different, which would have changed all of the Marauders significantly, because he very much seems to me their steady center. 
> 
> So in other words, this is part of a bigger AU idea that I had where Remus has more reason to expect cruelty, and therefore is capable of a bit more cruelty to others. Considering the level of violence and hatred the DE agenda is made of, I feel it’s unrealistic to think that they would follow Dumbledore’s golden standard all the time (think slightly more Killmonger than Black Panther, lol). If I do get around to posting that, that would be great, but I figured I'd lead with this and see what people think, if anyone reads this.  
Enjoy!!

Has he ever experienced this feeling before?

Sirius can’t recall. The last time he could remember a feeling related to his blood family that was even remotely positive was very, very long ago. And that’s categorizing this as positive--this feeling of sick guilt, self-revulsion, terror of abandonment. Its origin is something positive, he supposes. If he didn’t love Remus, he probably wouldn’t be feeling anything.

Maybe that’s why this had happened… why he’d done it. It even sounds like something Remus would say. He swallows, teeth scraping against his dry tongue, as he imagines what Remus would say, if Remus ever speaks to him again.

_ Well, it’s partly a problem with authority figures--of course you don’t trust them, raised in a house like that… You don't trust them to take action on your behalf, or anyone else's. Traumatic familial experiences will start to define all your other relationships too, Sirius, unless you address them, you know… and besides the authority problem, for a long while, the only attention you received from them was violent rebuke, yes? But children _ need _ attention. So you sought it out, because it’s all you had. Violent, angry attention was better than nothing. And now--now, you have to accept yourself as someone who seeks that out. You don’t want to spend your relationships with people you actually love making them angry--furious--just for the attention you already have, do you? _

Is that why he did it? For James’s attention, for Remus’s attention? He loves them. He knows he does. He loves his friends more than he ever thought he’d be able to love. Was it for that?

Or was it automatic, autopilot? That damned thoughtless provocateur soul of his, seeking out the newest way to stir up trouble without a wink for the consequences? He _ knows _ he does that sometimes. He’s so used to being the center of controversy that sometimes it feels like it creates itself. But no, it was him--as though his brain was specially designed for instigation, his most thoughtless moments gather the most attention, garner the most scandal.

Or was it something worse?

_ Toujours Pur _ . Blood will out. His hands had shaken for a moment, his body flush with heat, when he’d whispered to Snape those few words. It had been so simple-- _ ”You really want to know?” _\--so elegant, so retributory. 

So _ pureblood. _

Snape could have easily followed Remus himself. They had all grown too complacent about his change, too used to the secret routine, easily accepting that no one questioned why Remus was in the hospital wing so often. Had Snape been in the wrong place at the right time, a simple disillusionment charm and off he could have went--following Remus and Madame Pomfrey down the path, up to the Whomping Willow, underground, and down into the Shrieking Shack. It could have been the conveniently fatal consequence of a fool’s misplaced curiosity; ‘you know what they say about eavesdroppers’ and the like…

And who could say he didn’t deserve it? Always acting like that--turning his nose up at Remus, hissing _ blood traitor _ at them in the halls, working with Regulus to--to--

Sirius’s mind had been awash with vengeance, and he’d spoken, thoughtless.

Walburga Black herself couldn’t have planned a better murder.

It was that reckoning that had turned him cold. He’d run to James--James has always been the best of them, and it was moments like that he was reminded--and James had saved Snape’s life, and saved Sirius from expulsion, or arrest, most likely. His true punishment awaits him here, in the hospital wing, sitting upright on the bed, facing the windows so that all Sirius can see is his back, slightly curved in protective posture. 

Sirius stops, a few feet from the bed. He can barely breathe; the air feels thick, solid between them.

“What happened?”

Remus’s voice is measured and inflectionless, but Sirius still jumps. He flinches again as Remus raises his wand, but Remus only casts a privacy charm so they won’t be overheard.

Sirius barely manages to stutter out the story, bleakly, without embellishment. 

“I… it was completely my fault. I was… I don’t know what got into me, but… with everything that’s been going on this year, with Regulus too, I just…” He swallows, and starts properly. “I ran into Snape in the hallway last night. He started making--comments about you, like he does. Asking where it is you go all the time when it can’t be by choice, since we’re always together, stuff along those lines. He said--the same dumb stuff--”

_ The blood traitor charity case— _

_ Too thick to realize he’s kissing the wrong pureblood arse— _

_ Is he dying, then? Good riddance to bad rubbish. _

“And I asked him--”

_ You really want to know? _

“And I just told him… to go down to the Whomping Willow and press the knot on its base, and see where he ends up.”

He looks up. Remus still isn’t looking at him.

“Once I realized what--what I had done, what I had actually done--I had to go tell James, and he sent me to Dumbledore while he… he went and got Snape. But it was too late…he had seen...” 

Remus rolls his shoulders, finally, and twists around in a stretch, bringing his legs around as well. He’s facing Sirius now, but he still doesn’t look at him.

“Remus?”

Nothing.

“Remus, please say something.”

Still, that electric silence. His head bowed.

“Moony--”

“He called her mudblood, you know.”

“What?” Sirius is confused.

“Snape,” Remus’s voice is still that perfectly even, unnatural tone. “Snape called Lily mudblood.” 

“He… he didn’t.”

“Don’t pretend to be surprised,” Remus _ sneers_, and it’s such an unfamiliar look that Sirius almost takes a step back. “You know what he’s like. We’ve _ always _ known what he’s like. A lot like you, actually--I’m sure his family are all sociopaths, and they’re raising one to follow in their footsteps, whether they properly realize or not.”

It’s like a stab to the heart.

“But you’re different from him, Sirius,” Remus says, almost soothingly, when Sirius looks stunned and hurt. “Don’t you see?”

“I...” Sirius says, haltingly, a half-whisper. 

“You see, you're two sides of the same coin, in a way... both you and Snape found someone to support you. People who treated you with genuine kindness, accepted you, stood by you when your family abandoned you... They knew you were broken, but they took you in anyway, devoted themselves to you. And you devoted yourself to them.”

Sirius feels sick, and… and still, so confused. How does Remus know any of this about Snape?

Remus shrugs, as if in response to Sirius’s unspoken question. “We were all like that, really. All three of us. But you grow up. Things change.”

There is a silence, so Sirius ventures, “...change?”

“Yes,” there’s an odd shine to Remus’s eyes now. “Things change. That little family has never been the only thing in the world, or even your world. There are others who remind all of us of other _ family _… and what could have been.”

And how _ could _ he? How could Remus bring up Regulus like this, his tenuous truce of this year with Sirius, that was all just a farce to seduce Sirius to the Death Eaters? He’d thought--he’d hoped--but--

“And _ that _,” Remus says now, sounding satisfied. “Is where you are different, Sirius.”

“What are you saying?” he’s not allowed to be angry at Remus, really he isn’t, but when he’s being so strange and vacant it just begs his inciting soul--

“Severus,” he says, nearly spits. “Is a _ fool _.”

All the words die in Sirius’s throat.

And Remus’s eyes glow. “He’s a goddamn fool and you know it, Sirius. Because which of you, after everything, after that impossible damn salvation from a life of violence and misery, turned around and ran right back into its arms?” His voice raised. “Which of you spat in your real family’s face and took the hand of your abuser, and which of you said, if you say another word about my family I will throw you down the throat of a monster and _ smile _ as I do it?

"If you want to hurt him? _ Hurt _ him. If you want to kill him--"

"Remus, please--"

"Then kill him." His eyes gleam, burnished gold. "Finish it."

They look at each other for a minute, and Remus’s eyes fade slowly back to brown.

“But not like this,” He says, calmly again. “We’re your family now, Sirius. Don’t endanger us like this.”

“I won’t. I promise I won’t. Never again.”

“That’s not what I mean, either,” He says disapprovingly.

“Then…?”

Remus sighs. “You need to understand, you’re just—you’re never going to be completely Light. Not the way James is.” At Sirius’s anguished look, he clarifies. “And neither am I. We’ve both lived very different lives from James or even Lily. We’re always going to carry something with us from that.

“Your _ mistake _ ,” And he glares again. “Is thinking that is a _ weakness _. That is the strength that has kept both of us alive. We were able to learn from what was around us.”

“I’m not like them,” Sirius insists adamantly. “I refuse to be-- I won’t let them--”

Remus shakes his head. “No. You are what you are. And it’s that thinking--that’s what just infuriates me, Sirius. They did not break you. They did not sully you. You escaped that horrible, horrible place, and the things you learned are your family’s only repayments on an immeasurable debt. They owe you for that suffering. So take what you can from them.”

“Even if it’s how to plan a damn murder?”

“Especially that, don’t you see?” Remus is so imploring, so much more oddly energized than usual. It’s as if it were the day before the moon, not the day after. “Don’t you see? You had a plan, Sirius, and if you hadn’t told James--”

“If I hadn’t told James?” 

Remus shrugged. “I’m sure you’ve worked that much out for yourself.”

There’s blood whirling densely in Sirius’s ears, as he works out what it is that Remus is saying; he’s not sure what emotion to call this near-painful throb of blood in his head and his hands, and the pain in his throat that makes him hoarse, his chest shivering like he’s about to enter a duel. 

“But if you don’t accept that part of you,” Remus says hoarsely, soft again, a warning. “That’s what will destroy you, truly. That's the kind of thing that can tear a person apart. You’re a Black. Like it or not--and whether your family likes it or not. Blood will out, yeah?”

“So?” He says back, a little defiantly.

“So don't be afraid," Remus smiles now, small and sure. "to do a little bloodletting.” 


End file.
